Fractures
by Merlin Missy
Summary: Aughra knows.  Aughra was there.


Fractures  
Fandom: The Dark Crystal  
Written for: Meltha in the Yuletide 2006 Challenge  
by Merlin Missy 

I'd like to thank Fresne for her patient beta of this work.

* * *

Signs coming. My clock, swooping and soaring and swinging (duck by instinct now, didn't used to, too many bruises) tells me so. 

The Great Conjunction. Always we call it so, for two thousand years. Aughra isn't two thousand years old, not yet, but I knows things, yes.

Time to eat and wind the clock. Great vast gears on springs, took me years.

All Aughra has is time. Weaker arms though than when I shaped and carved and sweated and swore and cut my poor hands open. Blood on the gears, blood on the worlds. It was always so. Yes.

Crunchy po'beetles and asp berries. Landstrider milk will turn tomorrow if Aughra doesn't churn tonight, but the fafa meal is all gone and there won't be more for a month, so no bread for my butter. A cool jar maybe to keep, and grease the clock when the rancid smell grows too high. Fill my water barrel from the well, splash a drink. Aughra's life.

Reflections. Daft things, not right, skewed and silly there in the clear water. Aughra's getting old.

Once Aughra was not old. Once the world was not old. Once I didn't talk to myself. Once, what was broken was whole.

* * *

Before was when Aughra was young. 

Aughra remembered Before like some curious and uncatchable pipe song heard while she was deep in her cider. Her people lived and died on the other side of Thra (though when any asked, she said she was the last and only of her kind, and none contradicted her). So she should have done. When Aughra was wee and just off the tit, her mother sought their witch, and the witch said Aughra must go seek the Shining Ones.

In the white palace of the Shining Ones, Aughra did not shine. She swept and spit and polished their ornaments, and was kicked when she failed, and she did get down upon her sore knees twice daily to pray to the Crystal of Power (as it was in those days, for every thousand years it metamorphosizes, yes).

"Scullery girl!" shouted Esh, who ran the servants, and Aughra scooped up her skirts and stumbled to the summons.

"Cook!" called Kyla, the head maid, and Aughra pumped the bellows under the great bubbling pots of soup, scorched her sweet curls in the ovens removing roasts.

"Cinder maid!" teased Alion, the Shining One who mocked her as she groveled and fetched. Never tripped her, not once, she'd swear herself, but Aughra earned more skinned knees under those cold eyes than any other's.

Never pretty, never vain like the girls that giggled and fripped, in useless hope for a Shining Eye to catch. No. Dual they were in all ways, she came to know: light and dark, great and weak, female and male, mixed and tied and too bright to watch long. Robes and gowns Aughra readied, holding liquid fabrics in rough hands to place on lovely shoulders.

Aughra worked and worked and worked until one clumsy morning she fell upon her knees and the Crystal awoke and she looked into its facets and it looked into hers, and Aughra became a witch too.

Prophecies. The Shining Ones steeped themselves like girls bathing in milk. Aughra cast bones and read clouds, finding messages where before she would have seen chaos. She laughed aloud with new knowledge, reading fortunes in pollen dust, listening to futures in the sigh of the wind.

A hero would come.

Handsome. The hero was handsome, a Gelfling warrior called Kev with silk-fine hair as yellow as ripe fafa and long, gorgeous fingers.

Loved him? Ha. Aughra found in Kev no like-brained equal to complete her, no. She worshiped him as flowers worship the suns, though Kev's centuries were five fewer than Aughra's.

Already she had grown not young in the White Palace. (When things came to pass, yet she had not learned the truth of half-immortality: she would be old for a very long time.)

She watched him walk in her scrying pool, golden and strong, and she could not look away from him, from his companion, from his quest. Another witch, for witches were many in those days, bade him save the Crystal of Power from its masters.

Her masters.

Aughra watched her masters with new eyes. Shining and lovely, and also cold they were. The Gelflings and the Podlings and the Hrus and Aughra and the rest bowed to them like rulers, like gods. Some thought they were, yes. Not Alion, she knew; she could read like sharp runes the lust in his frame, the desire to be what he was not.

Each day Alion climbed up to her chamber, high and sweet in the White Palace, far above the dark, cramped servants' rooms. "Scry me a future," Alion ordered her. "Scry me a world where the Crystal has yielded up power and mystery. Read your portents, witch."

Each day Aughra cast dark ink upon her glass, clear as the Crystal, asking for futures, in her heart of hearts asking for a future where Kev came to the White Palace and smiled at her alone, but the future was murky on all fronts.

She watched. Many adventures befell Kev and his boon friend Zin.

First, they braved the Ild Kanan, the trial of fire and water. Aughra's breath clouded her glass as she pressed her face close in fear. The water punished Kev with lash after lash. Aughra reached out her power, let the angry torrent splash and slap her ghostly hand instead of his face, until he breathed enough to turn the waves upon the flames licking at Zin's feet.

She heard Alion's tread upon her stair just in time. "What are you doing?" he asked in brightest glory and she lied. She lied.

"Too unclear. Not time yet," she muttered, dropping gems across the surface of her glass to obscure the vision from prying eyes. Unappeased, he left her.

Days crept by, and Aughra dared peek only seldom. Too risky. The Crystal gave and the Crystal took, and the Crystal knew when Aughra's designs were not those of her masters.

While she did not watch, the Beast of Asder claimed the life of Kev's friend Zin, graceful limbs chewed into rags by the creature's great jaws. Aughra's glass showed her Kev, alone, wounded and weak and grieving. Aughra wept alone in her chamber as Kev buried Zin's body at the mouth of the Beast's cave and set the Beast's skull atop the grave as guard. Two hundred years ere it fell to dust, a fitting monument for a time of heroes.

The Great Conjunction drew near. Five times a day and twice at night, Alion came to her, begging, beseeching, ordering. Spells the Shining Ones were drawing, spells they planned to sing. "Give us your power, great Crystal! Give us your secrets and teach us your truths!"

"Will they work?"

"Yes," she told him, pretending to glean the truth from a handful of dropped beans. "Yes. Be glad-hearted come the Conjunction. Power and mystery, yes. All truths shall be known. Now leave me be."

Aughra sent Kev soft winds and warm sunlight, but blood still dripped from his wounds. Fell, he fell, and Aughra nearly ran, nearly did drop her glass and her airs and her life to run into the forest for him. Scoop him into her arms. Save his life.

But the glass shimmered. Sorceress. The sorceress Lida, with long, dark hair and elegant features. Her doorway where he fell. Lida scooped him into her arms. Lida saved his life.

Aughra watched.

Kev smiled at Lida as she bound his wounds and wiped Zin's blood from his arms. Kev smiled at Lida as she placed before him trays of good food and flagons of smooth wine. Kev smiled at Lida as she tossed her dark hair and agreed to join him on his quest.

Aughra frowned at her glass and hoped in her deepest heart that Lida was a Soul-Eater, one who seduced men before breathing out their souls and cracking their bones for the marrow.

Her glass went dark and could not be coaxed back to life, not yet.

Kev was a hero, sure. A hero's gait and a hero's mien and a hero's sword strapped to his waist that glinted in the light of the Crystal as he stood between it and the Shining Ones at the moment of the Great Conjunction. Power they sought, and knowledge, and Kev's witch had placed upon him the task of keeping the Shining Ones from obtaining this, lest the world fall.

Magic and light scattered through the Crystal Chamber. Her masters ordered her to cast against the interloper, who dared interrupt their greatest spell.

"Witch!" they called her, arms raised as magics from their hands deflected from the tip of his bright sword.

"Aughra!" they pleaded, as the sword moved and chopped, and arms fell to the floor.

_"Cinder maid,"_ she heard in her head, and felt the kicks from those lovely feet, and she stayed her own power.

"Mine," said Alion, breaking Lida's neck, and grasping hold of the Crystal as the suns aligned.

In grief and rage, Kev struck his sword at Alion, his hero's mission forgotten, his quest abandoned. Such a sword and such a dark anger and such a powerful Shining One as Alion. Really, the end was no surprise.

Aughra never forgot the screams of the Shining Ones as they tore in two, though she cared for nothing but the broken, golden body on the floor of the Crystal Chamber. She wept upon it, summoning all the magic she knew, but her magic was gone with the Crystal of Power, only one shard remaining clear and true, held in a death-grip in Kev's hand. She had to break his fingers, the snapping noises unheard among the wailing of those who would be called Skeksis and Mystics.

She kissed Kev's brow, ached at his unsmiling death-gaze. Not a hero. No. Not _the_ hero. Only a note in someone else's journey after all. Aughra slipped the shard into her robes and carried the poor dead things all alone to the forest.

* * *

Aughra visits the privy because asp berries keep the bowels regular. Old. Aughra's old and has been old and the berries help. The Podlings call me the Old Witch, but Aughra's got no magics left now except what I borrow, dribbled out miserly from the shard. 

Stupid shard. Stupid Crystal, getting broken so easily. What, the Shining Ones needed a lesson in humility and the whole world suffers? Pah! All has come to darkness and ruin, Garthim everywhere and all the Gelflings as dead as Kev who never did look on Aughra's face.

Above, the clock spins and dances. Counting, calling, looking. In the scrying glass, before it went dark forever, Aughra saw. One more prophecy.

Gelfling hand it was that broke the Crystal. Gelfling hand it must be to fix. No Gelflings left, and the clock spins round towards the Great Conjunction again. Crystal of Power to Dark Crystal to nothing at all?

Maybe.

Maybe a hero comes anyway. Heroes do. Maybe this hero will be handsome too. Aughra will wait. Aughra has time.

Yes.

* * *

The End

* * *


End file.
